64 pages • 2 hours read
Kirstin Valdez QuadeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Brianna is at home on a Saturday night, talking on the phone with her friend, Sierra. Sierra lives in Portland and is on her way out to drinks, dinner, and a club. The two chat about the men they are seeing (Sierra has two boyfriends), and Brianna admits to being ashamed of Amadeo’s lack of education and a steady job. Brianna is still very drawn to him and imagines herself as a “cool” stepmother to Angel. Amadeo recently shared his concern about his daughter’s mental health with Brianna, and Brianna is on the lookout for signs of post-partum depression. When she and Sierra hang up, Brianna texts Amadeo.
Angel and Lizette have been getting together every day after class to work on their project and have sex. Angel envisions a life for the two of them and their children together, but Lizette is a complex, emotionally volatile girl whose hot-and-cold behavior Angel finds confusing. Angel notices that Lizette cuts herself, but does not press her for details.
Angel and Lizette give their presentation, which covers Finland’s childcare culture and policies, to the class. They have done an excellent job, and their project sparks a discussion on democratic socialism, society, and the differences between opportunities for the working poor and working classes in different Western countries. When they finish, Brianna congratulates Angel on her hard work but excludes Lizette from her praise.
Though Yolanda has all but stopped going out after work with her coworkers, tonight she joins her boss, Monica, and some of the other women from the capitol for drinks. Yolanda dances with a stranger. She feels an intense sense of grief about her coming resignation and the impending end of her life.
Ryan calls Angel and asks if he can come see Connor. Although their meeting is awkward, Ryan does show interest in his son and tells Angel that he has been watching YouTube videos about babies and parenting.
Yolanda’s boss, Monica, has a cracked windshield, and Yolanda has arranged for Amadeo to fix it. While engaged in his task, he hopes that someone will ask him what he is doing so that he can explain his business and receive praise from a stranger. He contemplates telling Brianna about his job, and in his mind, he inflates the relationship between himself and Monica, an important figure at the capitol, to make Brianna jealous. Amadeo runs into trouble, and he spills the resin he uses down the windshield and onto the body of her car. Although he tries to find paper towels to fix his mess, ultimately, he gives up. He ends up at a bar, leaving his mother to deal with Monica and her damaged vehicle.
When Amadeo returns to the parking garage where both his mother’s and Monica’s cars are parked, Monica is standing with his mother. He expects his mother to help him, but Yolanda does not, and he is left to speak with Monica on his own. Monica curtly suggests a payment plan so that he can cover the cost of repairing the damage that he has done to her car. As they are talking, Yolanda falls to the ground and has her first seizure.
Yolanda is taken to the emergency room, and afterward, she undergoes brain surgery. Both Amadeo and Valerie rush to the hospital, where they are told by Yolanda’s doctors that part of her tumor was inoperable. She only has a few months left to live. Bereft, the siblings do not fight. Amadeo asks Valerie if she remembers the two hugging every day on their old sofa after their father’s death, but she says no. Yolanda returns home, and her children and Angel work together to care for her. Monica visits, bringing flowers and a card from everyone in the office. She and Amadeo have a tense exchange about her car, which she has since had repaired.
Angel tries to distract herself from worrying about her grandmother by focusing on school, but at school, she cannot help but worry about Lizette, who hasn’t spoken much to her since the two finished their project. Angel goes to the bathroom to check her texts, and Ryan has messaged her. He wants to come over after school one day that week to visit Connor. Lizette enters the bathroom, notices Angel on her phone, and asks who she is texting. Angel tells her that it is “no one,” and Lizette becomes possessive, aggressively questioning Angel about the texts. Angel tells Lizette that her grandmother is dying, and Lizette responds with a cold “that sucks.” It occurs to Angel that “love” doesn’t feel very good to her.
Yolanda finally calls her boyfriend, Cal. It has been six months since she received her cancer diagnosis in Las Vegas and abruptly left him there. She explains everything to him, and he is hurt that she chose to shut him out. She is not able, even now, to open up to him emotionally. The two exchange a tearful goodbye.
Tío Tíve has begun to bring groceries to Yolanda, Amadeo, Angel, and Connor. Yolanda continues to decline. She forgets how to pronounce words and grows thinner and less active every day. Tío Tíve tells Amadeo to take good care of his family, to do better than Amadeo’s father, Anthony, did. Tío Tíve regrets not spending more time with his own sons, Elwin and Anthony. He tells Amadeo that after Elwin died, he struggled to give Anthony the support that he clearly needed. Staggering, Yolanda walks up to them and tells them that she loved Anthony even though he was gay. The two think that she is rambling, that her tumor is scrambling her thoughts. They urge her back to her room.
Connor is teething, and Amadeo helps Angel to care for the boy; he even stays up with his grandson until the early hours of the morning so that Angel can sleep. Amadeo speaks briefly with Brianna, who is upset that he has been so out of touch over the last few weeks. Although Amadeo initially tries to stay vague with her, he ends up losing his temper, cursing, telling her that his mother is dying before hanging up.
In class, Angel tries to focus on her schoolwork and not on Yolanda. One day, after one of her classmates tried to sell raffle tickets for her church, Lizette gets upset at what she perceives as Brianna’s favoritism. Brianna allows the girls she likes to break the class rules, while Lizette is always held to them. Brianna tells Lizette that her outburst is inappropriate, and the two argue until Brianna leaves the classroom. Lizette also leaves, gathering all her belongings from her desk and storming out.
Amadeo goes to the Morada to pray for the first time in months. He struggles because he doesn’t know the rosary and is distracted by thoughts of what it had been like for Mary to parent Jesus. Al Martínez and his son, Isaiah, enter. Isaiah is a heroin addict who just last night lost his girlfriend to an overdose. The three pray together.
Angel worries about Lizette. She sends multiple texts to no response. Finally, Lizette calls her back. Lizette is going to move in with her cousin. As Lizette stays cold and distant with Angel, Angel realizes that Lizette is not going to return to Smart Starts! Angel plans to talk to Brianna about the situation.
At the Morada, Isaiah tells Amadeo that Lowe’s is hiring. Wondering what Jesus would do, Amadeo realizes that Jesus would get a job, continue to help Angel, and apologize to Brianna. He calls Brianna to tell her that he’s sorry, and the two agree to meet.
After school, Angel tries to talk to Brianna about Lizette, but fails to muster the courage. Not wanting to go home, she instead goes to the nearby Jack-in-the-Box for a milkshake. In the parking lot, she sees Brianna and her father talking. From the intimacy of their gestures and how close they stand, it’s clear to Angel that the two are more than friends.
Multiple conflicts converge in this section. Angel and Lizette struggle through an ill-defined relationship as Brianna and Amadeo similarly struggle to find their footing together. Amadeo fails at his windshield business, and Yolanda is forced to reveal her cancer diagnosis to her family. In the midst of the messy outcomes of all these conflicts, the family must begin to come together to care for Yolanda.
The deterioration of the relationship between Amadeo and Brianna, which begins on shaky ground, ties into the theme of Personal Growth and Identity. Although Amadeo is beginning to be a supportive figure to Angel, he is also engaging in a secret relationship with Brianna. To his credit, he accepts Brianna for who she is and seems to enjoy his time with her. The two have a markedly different set of life experiences, but Amadeo sees a whole person when he looks at her and is not troubled by their differences. Amadeo’s personal growth thus far, as well as his deepening investment in developing an identity that incorporates his family, has strengthened his empathy. In contrast, Brianna has remained static, as reflected by her inability to see Amadeo, in return, as a full person. She thinks of Amadeo as a “deadbeat,” viewing him as a walking stereotype, right down to his tattoos.
The behavior and perceptions of Brianna in these chapters resemble the very behavior and perceptions that Amadeo is learning to leave behind, emphasizing Brianna’s failure to grasp the meaning of Redemption and Faith even as Amadeo does. Brianna is self-absorbed, interpreting interactions as either serving or undermining her desires. She engages in unrealistic fantasies of being Angel’s “cool” stepmother, much as Amadeo indulges in a self-centered fantasy while attempting to fix Monica’s windshield. Brianna’s application of philosophy also reflects Amadeo’s application of faith during the procession, which was self-serving and performative. For example, Brianna is able to apply feminist theory to her own sex life and question her attraction to what she sees as typical masculinity, but she is not able to engage in that level of self-reflection when it comes to her views on race, class, and ethnicity. Her opinions about Amadeo are troublingly prejudicial, even more so because she is having sex with him. As fond of abstract theory as she can be, Brianna is not able to use that lens to unpack the deeply problematic way that she dehumanizes Amadeo even as she engages in a sexual relationship with him. Brianna’s virginity before their relationship hints at her absence of specific experience in a context where that experience is critical, as Amadeo accurately, if jokingly, points out.
Brianna’s relationship with Lizette, too, continues to be marred by her own unexamined racism, and their in-class conflicts boil over into a loud altercation that Brianna, as she usually does, treats as a power struggle rather than a cry for help. The lack of understanding shown to girls with behavior problems like Lizette is itself a factor in Generational Trauma and Healing. That Lizette elicits little empathy is both a result of her inner trauma and a contributing factor to the limited options for individuals like her who grow up in poverty. Lizette does not have access to high-quality education or mental health care. She was not taught self-care and healthy coping skills at home. The Smart Starts! program is her one opportunity to break the cycle of addiction and poverty. But because of Brianna’s lack of cultural awareness and proper job training, Lizette is banned from the program. Lizette will not have the opportunity to learn the skills she needs, indicating that she will not pass those skills on to her own child, perpetuating the pattern of trauma rather than initiating healing.
Lizette’s generational trauma is on further display in her relationship with Angel. Lizette is unable to show consistent affection to Angel, often behaving in manipulative and, at times, controlling ways. Lizette builds emotional walls between herself and Angel, and although Angel wants to break them down, Lizette keeps her distance. Lizette refuses to discuss her self-harm with Angel, ultimately pushing Angel away. This behavior should recall, for readers, Angel’s admission that she pushes people away in order to force them to try harder, so that she can feel truly confident that she is loved. It also echoes Yolanda’s behavior with her boyfriend, with the grandmother’s emotional distance hinting at the isolated future that awaits the young women if they do not change. Taken together, all these behaviors are signs of underlying trauma. Although Lizette creates an unhealthy relationship atmosphere for her and Angel because of this trauma, the narrative prompts readers to understand that Lizette is acting out of a place of deep pain.
Tragically, Lizette is revealed to be an intelligent, thoughtful student when she wants to be. Her idea to choose Finland as the topic for a project on international parenting norms is intentional: She has read that in Finland, parents are strongly supported by the robust welfare state present in democratically socialist countries. She has prepared for their project and thought further about it. Their work sparks an engaged and thoughtful class discussion on cultural norms, privilege, inequality, and different forms of government. Brianna, nonetheless, ignores this aspect of Lizette to see only her outward displays of disobedience.
Finally, although Amadeo has made progress on his path toward responsibility, he stumbles terribly in his attempt to fix Monica’s car windshield. The spilled resin results from his self-centered daydreaming. Worse still is his attempt to flee the scene after. He goes to drink after damaging the car, intending to leave his mother to deal with the aftermath. When he returns to the scene, though, he must face the consequences twofold. His mother leaves him to face Monica, and shortly after, the stress of the interaction between Amadeo and Monica causes Yolanda to have a seizure. With this lesson behind him, Amadeo heads into his next opportunity to test his commitment to change. The entire family must come together to care for Yolanda at home during what will be her final months of life.